Microsft has made hard statements about perfomance improvements in Longhorn. They claim that applications will load 15% faster than in XP, while boot time is decreased by 50%. They also claimed that Longhorn will be able to wake up from sleep in 2 seconds. Users should also expect half as many reboots during patching. Time to dust of those trustworthy stopwatches.

"Facts: People are moving from Windows/Linux to MacOSX and they are paying for Apple hardware."

It is not as if a few thousands more users means that Apple is taking the world by storm.
My facts: I have been following personal computers from the very beginning. I have lived in many European countries, especially of course Italy, but also the UK, the Netherlands and Germany. I have met thousands of computer users. I have seen (and briefly used) Macs only twice: in 1984, when the cost of a Mac was about ten good monthly salaries, and many years later my house mates in Brighton used a Mac.
Here in Italy Macs are virtually unknown: some computer shops have never heard of Apple and Mac.

>>"Not to mention the thirld world, which is the true battleground at the moment: buying a Mac? ROFLMAO, they don't even know what it is."

Fascinating business model to focus on customers that have no money<<

And yet Microsoft is extremely keen to retain that market, even if that means millions of pirated copies or selling their software for much less.

Concluding: I am a self confessed geek and I'd like to try and possibly use a Mac OSX: but I'll never accept to be ripped off and pay for hardware twice the price I'd pay for an ordinary PC.

As to ordinary people they know only Windows. It is very easy to introduce them to linux because the cost is 0Eur. And in fact there are quite a few linux users in this 9,000 inhabitants town. If I told people to spend a minimum of 800Eur in order to try a new computer with an unknown OS, I would in no time gain a reputation for being mad. And this is by no means a town with low living standards, just the opposite.